Regulation
Kraken considers delisting USDT in Europe due to MiCA rules
Kraken could drop EU support for Tether’s USDT stablecoin, Bloomberg reported May 17th.
Marcus Hughes, Kraken’s global head of regulatory strategy, said the company is planning for circumstances where “it is not sustainable to list specific tokens as USDT.”
The EU regulatory landscape is set to change when the EU Cryptocurrency Markets Guidelines (MiCA) come into force in July. MiCA will require companies that issue fiat-backed stablecoins, such as Tether, to register as electronic money institutions (EMIs) and meet other requirements.
Hughes said the new regulations will reduce the number and varieties of stablecoins available in Europe depending on which companies comply with the EU regime.
Other statements do not describe delisting. In a separate report from The Block, a Kraken spokesperson said the company continually reviews its global strategy and operations to ensure compliance, but has “no current plans to remove Tether or alter [its] USDT Trading Pairs.”
EU regulatory concerns
Tether told Bloomberg that it expects exchanges to hold USDT as an on-ramp and off-ramp, while providing EUR liquidity to European clients.
In its statement Tether also referred to the concerns of its CTO, Paolo Ardoino. Ardoino criticized MiCA’s “strong constraints” regarding the management of reserves and said the company had no plans to seek regulatory approval in the EU “for the time being”.
Other cryptocurrency exchanges have also made similar moves in recent months in anticipation of MiCA. OKX has removed Tether from the list for EU users in March but did not directly mention the upcoming regulations. The company said it will continue to support Circle’s competing USDC stablecoin.
Elsewhere, Binance France head of legal Marina Parthuisot said in September 2023 that the company may remove “all stablecoins in Europe on June 30.”
The then CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhaohe later claimed that this had been taken out of context and that the company had partnered with compliant stablecoin issuers.